How To: Make Mushroom Shelves

We have a sort-of suspicion that, up close, these shelves -- made out of actual shelf mushrooms -- might be a bit too reminiscent of those clocks made from overly lacquered slices of logs, but this photo gives them such Alice in Wonderland appeal that we kind of love them anyway.

This is definitely a project for the intrepid, as it involves first wandering through the woods finding just the right mushroom (shelf-like, natch, and firm rather than mushy), then letting it dry in your home for a few days, then drying it still further in the oven before proceeding to trim it, attach wall fastenings, and finally finish it with a protective coating of, you guessed it, lacquer. (The post does recommend the matte, rather than the glossy, variety.)

Read the full tutorial: FinderMaker

Via Make

Comments (3)

I saw this tutorial on Make, and thought it was awesome. It definitely works best with the natural-history display kind of thing going on...

posted by heather @ dollarstorecrafts.com on October 4th 2009 at 5:32pm
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Being from Oregon and loving the wilderness, I find it appalling to go out in the woods and rip shelf mushrooms off the bark of a old-growth tree...with little regard to the years and years it spent growing . Out here we practice 'take nothing but photographs'.

posted by ck2of5 on October 5th 2009 at 7:45pm
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I think this is a neat idea and definitely one I will consider. I live in Wa and to be honest I find plenty of these on the ground after a storm even just outside my house. Ripping them off trees is not even necessary.

posted by teawithsteph on October 7th 2009 at 1:20am
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